LAND OF LOST TREASURE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 101, 2 May 1925, Page 16

LAND OF LOST TREASURE

GOLD AND GEMS IN SOUTH

AMERICA.

One effect of Lieutenant-Colonel Fav/cett's expedition-in quest of thf* lost cities of South America will probably be the focusing of European attention on that continent as a treasure cemetery, writes P. Murphy in the "Daily News." As is not surprising in land from which gold and silver in fabulous quantities have been mined, several States of South America, particularly Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru, abound in tales of buried treasure. Many of these tales naturally date back to the time of the Gonquistadores and their successors, from whom the aborigines certainly concealed far more gold than they "delivered up—vast quantities though these, weifi—to Pizarro and other Spanish adventurers.

Plans have often oeen formed for the drainage of the Guativita Lake, where originated the legend of "El Dorado." Prior to the coming of the Spaniards to that district of modern Colombia, the natives were accustomed to east gold ornaments and utensils into Guatavita as an offering to their gods; and in the bottom of that Like may rest gold that would make the enormous ransom paid to Pizarro for Atahuaipa look trivial. Belief persists among travellers and historians that but for the murder of tho unfortunate Inca. a much greater sum could have fallen to his captors. The Indiana who were, bearing this vanished gold from tho more distant part of the wide empire of the. lncas, hearing of th« death of their monarch, promptly hid their precious loads. To this day their descendants keep the secret of these hidl nS Paces, and death by torture haa tailed to induce betravul. £ ty Mount Sorata. in Bolivia, is a small lake; and a hardlheaded American syndicate was so confident of treasure to be f d{n it . thaj . . fc offered Government £20,000 for permission to £™ ?M d the? make «v« half the liove to the nation. Tempting as was the proposal to a poor country like Boma i 2t was declined through fear oi causmg a general revolt among the Indian population of all the States lying worftdM 6 £!"*?■ • Arolmd the m»le* worked by the Jesuits prior to their exputawn from South America in the igSeentn century there has sprung U n an locate tliese lost mines. In- many in rS s °LTe Urb' the le^" Ve^r dX R ossesf lon of documents giving a Jesuit mlaef6^o^ ,° f ,°- Ile f "he»